Budgie Remix 16.04, the unofficial Ubuntu flavor that uses Budgie Desktop by default, was released recently.

For now, Budgie Remix is an unofficial Ubuntu flavor however, its developers aim at making it an official member of the Ubuntu family. The next step towards this goal is to release Budgie Remix 16.04.1 in three months, followed by a first Budgie Remix 16.10 alpha in July.

Budgie Remix 16.04 is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it includes the latest Budgie Desktop 10.2.5. Budgie Desktop integrates tightly with the GNOME stack and it features a libmutter-based window manager and a customizable panel which includes an applet, notification, and customization center, called Raven.

I have to note that Budgie Desktop doesn't support AppIndicators and tray icons don't seem to work either, or at least some don't work (I tried Shutter and Transmission in Budgie Remix 16.04 and the tray icon didn't work for either of them), this being my only issue with Budgie desktop.

The new unofficial Ubuntu flavor already includes its own artwork, with custom Plymouth and LightDM theme, and the beautiful Arc GTK and Faba icon themes.

Furthermore, Budgie Remix 16.04 includes Nautilus 3.18, and not the version available in the official Ubuntu 16.04 repositories, which is 3.14:

That's possible because Budgie Remix is not an official Ubuntu flavor, so it uses a PPA by default, which provides not only Nautilus 3.18, but also the whole Budgie Desktop, artwork and so on.

You can use this PPA to try Budgie Desktop in Ubuntu, but keep in mind that it will update Nautilus to a version that doesn't have any Unity patches (you can lock the current Nautilus version to avoid that though).

Other applications included by default with Budgie Remix 16.04 include Plank (0.11.1) dock, which is used on the left of the screen with Intellihide and a beautiful theme called Arc by default, along with:

Gedit 3.18

GNOME Photos 3.18

gThumb 3.4.3

Rhythmbox 3.3

Totem 3.18

Eye Of GNOME (Image Viewer) 3.18

GNOME Terminal 3.18

LibreOffice 5.1.2

Firefox 45

Transmission 2.84

and various utilities like Calculator, Disks, Calendar and so on.

For installing new software and updates, Budgie Remix uses GNOME Software and Software Updater, just like Ubuntu (with Unity):

Under the hood, just like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Budgie Remix includes GTK+ 3.18.9, Mesa 11.2.0, Xorg server 1.18.3 and the Ubuntu Linux Kernel 4.4.0-21, based on the upstream 4.4.6 Linux Kernel.

Budgie Remix 16.04 video

To see Budgie Remix 16.04 in action, check out the video below (by Riba Linux):